My Dark Places - James Ellroy [48]
I coveted my Jew-baiter rep. I took my mother’s antipapist line and ragged John Kennedy’s presidential efforts. I cheered Caryl Chessman into the gas chamber. I urged my classmates to dig the atom bomb. I drew swastikas and Stuka airplanes all over my notebooks.
My antics were meant to shock. They were inspired by the brightness and erudition I encountered at school. My reactionary fervor was kinship twisted inside-out.
That brightness rubbed off on me. I got good grades with minimum effort. My accountant father did my math homework and prepared test crib sheets for me. I was free to read and dream away my off-school hours.
I read crime novels and watched crime TV shows. I went to crime movies. I built model cars and blew them up with firecrackers. I stole books. I crashed a ban-the-bomb rally in Hollywood and chucked eggs at pinko placard wavers. I developed a big throbbing love of classical music.
Dahlia nightmares came in intermittent bunches. My day flashes cohered around one image.
Betty Short was pinned to a revolving target board. A man’s hand spun the board and slashed Betty with a chisel.
The image was subjectively viewed. The image made me the killer.
The Dahlia was always with me. Real girls vied for my heart. A killer was stalking all the schoolgirls I grooved on. Jill, Kathy and Donna lived in great peril.
My rescue fantasies were richly detailed. My intercessions were swift and brutal. Sex was my only reward.
I stalked Jill, Kathy and Donna around school. I lurked near their homes on the weekend. I never talked to them.
My father was getting real action. His pal George told me he was fucking two check-stand girls at the Larchmont Safeway. I came home unexpectedly one day and caught him in the sack.
It was a hot afternoon. Our apartment door was open. I walked up the outside stairs and heard groaning. I tiptoed inside and peeped through the bedroom doorway.
My father was pouring the pork to a zaftig brunette. The dog was on the bed with them. She was dodging legs and trying to sleep on a bouncing mattress.
I watched for a while and tiptoed back outside.
I was wising up to my father. If he really won all those medals, he’d be as famous as Audie Murphy. If he had real drive and talent, we’d be living fat in Hancock Park right now. He was too proud to hand-sell his ten thousand Tote Seats—but not too proud to scam money off my mother’s insurance policy.
My teeth needed straightening. I hit my Aunt Leoda up for orthodontic treatment money and overquoted the amount required. My father paid the dentist’s initial bill and pocketed the balance. He fell behind on his maintenance payments and paid a cut-rate oral surgeon 20 bucks to cut the hardware off my teeth.
Aunt Leoda was easily conned. I snow-jobbed her regularly. I was trashing my college education fund. The thought didn’t faze me one iota.
I hated Ed and Leoda Wagner and my cousins Jeannie and Janet. My father hated the Wagner clan big-time. My hatred was his hatred carbon-copied.
Leoda thought my father killed my mother. My father got a kick out of the notion. He told me Leoda suspected him from the start.
I dug the Dad-as-killer concept. It subverted my awareness of my father’s passive nature and gave the man some panache. He killed my mother to gain custody of me. He knew that I hated her. He was a killer and I was a thief.
My father harped on Aunt Leoda’s suspicions. He enjoyed the implicit drama. He pushed me back to that stack of newspaper clippings.
I reread them. I matched my father’s face to a police sketch of the Dark Man. There was no resemblance whatsoever. My father did not murder my mother. He was with me when the crime occurred.
Spade Cooley beat his wife to death in April ’61. He was hopped up on amphetamines. Ella Mae Cooley wanted